September 10, 2003

Deja vu all over again!

Ok… so I’ve had these two books that I took out of the library for my chapter on “Ekphrasis by Women and the Self Portrait Poem: 20th Century Poets Refiguring the Artist as Model” (title not yet definite), and I’ve been doing all kinds of research on the self-portrait. During the course of this research, I checked out two books from the library. The first, Flaeshin-g Mirror: Women Artists’ Self-Representation in the Twentieth Century is written by Tiziana Agnati and published by Selene Edizioni in Milan. The copyright date is 2001. I also checked out a book by Marsha Meskimmon titled The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-portraiture in the Twentieth Century published by Columbia University Press in New York. The copyright is 1996. Now, there’s an acknowledgements section at the front of this volume, but that is the only thing that separates it from the other text. I mean, the covers are different… the shape of the book is different… but the 2001 publication gives absolutely no acknowledgement to the 1996 version. Both authors take credit for the work. Both works are in English. And, both book covers include brief biographies of both authors as author of the text in hand.

They are almost exactly the same.

So, who do I attribute the ideas to? I read the Agnati first, but it couldn’t have existed without the presence of the Meskimmon. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It strikes me as utterly bizarre. Quite frankly, I don’t know who to credit. I suppose, credit could go to Meskimmon because her book was published first. Her book is published by a more well-known publisher… but at the same time—does the other deserve mentioning, since that’s the text that I actually read? Amazon lists the Meskimmon text, but not the Agnati, and more people have checked Meskimmon out of the library. I suppose that somehow at this stage I shouldn’t be quite so perplexed by problems like this, but it concerns me. How does this happen? How does a near exact duplicate of the text exist without any attribution? Finally, how do they both show up under entirely different call numbers in the university library?

So, that’s my mystery for the day. I have to get back to writing about mirrors and self-portraits….maybe I’ll just attribute it to “?” until I have a better idea what to do with this.

I know... it *feels* like plagiarism... but I don't want to go around accusing someone before I know the full story. But it's this really bizarre multiple personality issue. My research has two faces. I have Agnati's name on all of my index cards, but I keep writing Meskimmon in my draft. If this is plagiarism... well... WOW! What a dumb move!

It's April 6 just after 7PM East Coast time, and I see the "Agnati book" in question does NOT come up via Search at http://www.edizioniselene.it/web/search/ -- whether searching under Agnati or Mirror.

I feel it is necessary at this point to make a brief statement and send thanks to the student who originally opened this discussion and thus alerted me to the existence of the illicit copy of my book. For legal reasons, I cannot speculate as to the source of the copy or enter into a detailed discussion of the evidence amassed to date.

The volume, ‘Flaesh-in(g) Mirror’ is an unauthorised, verbatim copy of my 1996 book, The Art of Reflection: Women Artists' Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century (Columbia UP and Scarlet Press). It is an exact, sentence by sentence, copy of the entire book (minus my original acknowledgements), in English. It includes even the foreword by Rosy Martin and uncredited images seemingly scanned directly from my book, which may constitute a further violation of copyright.

It is, according to the copyright officers to whom I have spoken, the worst case they have seen, as it breaks primary, secondary and tertiary rights. However, it is not yet clear who is responsible.

In the meantime, I am asking colleagues to check their institutional (and personal) libraries to ensure that this text does not continue to circulate - a simple check against my book will demonstrate the severity of this case.

Apologies for being pedantic but the text in question is NOT 'written' by Tiziana Agnati as stated in the opening entry to this discussion. It is entirely the work of Meskimmon and was published in 1996 under the title 'The Art of Reflection'.

Whether Agnati or Selene Edizione are directly responsible for this outrageous plagiarism and violation of copyright may be unconfirmed, (perhaps someone - Columbia UP for example - should pursue this?) but it is quite clear that a crime has been committed against the author, the publisher and the artists whose work is reproduced.

Under no circumstances should any credit be given to Agnati for the origination of this text. The work and ideas contained therein must be attributed to Meskimmon for 'The Art of Reflection'.